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I fear you will be unable to recognize when that burger was your choice and when it was a reaction. You probably won't notice. And that is harmless. I also fea

I fear you will be unable to recognize when that burger was your choice and when it was a reaction. You probably won't notice. And that is harmless. I also fear you will be unable to notice in which areas of life and information the distinction between choice and reaction is harmless and which it isn't. Of course, I'm not talking about "You" you, but just people. Me as well. I feel we are widening the field of unconscious decisions and I see that as inherently bad - in my fellow humans as well. You could say that Plato wanted us to make easy things simple (link for distinction: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy). I believe this to be a move in the opposite direction. We should have a care.

empath75 10y ago
I think for quite a large number of people, allowing AIs to make decisions for them will probably be better for them.
- tedunangst 10y ago
  Imagine some day your doctor advises to cut back on burgers and alcohol. Is Google going to incorporate that advice in its bar recommendations?
  - aqzman 10y ago
    Is it Google's responsibility to? I would say no. If algorithms detect that an individual is going to a bar every Monday and Thursday night, and then starts providing information about said bar on Monday and Thursday nights I don't see the problem. But I think it would be a problem if every Monday and Thursday night Google Now started providing information about AA meetings in the area, instead of bar information. It's up to the user to make the choice, Google Now just detects trends and then displays information based on those trends. I go to the gym every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday morning. And each of those mornings Google Now tells me how many minutes it will take me to get to the gym from my current location. Should Google Now start giving me directions to the nearest breakfast place instead? No, not unless that starts becoming my pattern.
    - tedunangst 10y ago
      If you're trying to change your lifestyle, it's more difficult when you have a bad friend constantly enabling the behavior you're trying to cease. Google may not have a responsibility to be a good friend, but personally I'd prefer not to have a bad friend always following me around, thus I'm a little less excited about this feature.
      - whonut 10y ago
        You can just tell it to stop. It's not hard.
        kodablah 10y ago
        I think many would rather tell it when to start instead. What's hard about telling it to stop is when you can't tell it's started because it's something more nuanced than the obvious diet plan.
    - daveguy 10y ago
      It may not be their responsibility (although if it had that information it would be the morally correct choice). However, regardless of the responsibility -- the CEO of the company saying "we're going to make your life better!" by an AI pushing products is almost certainly not going to make your life better. > Should Google Now start giving me directions to the nearest breakfast place instead? That may depend on how much Waffle House pays for advertising, and that is the problem.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Why not? As long as you're clicking their ads, they'll make money regardless of whether you're buying a burger or a salad.
- Super_Jambo 10y ago
  When the AIs are working in service of corporations this seems incredibly unlikely. We already see what happens when peoples decision making is coloured by mass media advertising. An obese population trapped by debts taken out to fuel consumption. It is in other peoples best interests for you to work like a slave, be addicted to unhealthy habits & run up vast debts in order to buy their products. We keep allowing those with power to distort the markets gaining themselves more money and more power at the expense of the little guy. I don't see any reason why AI in the service of the powerful will do anything but accelerate that.
- inimino 10y ago
  That rather depends on the objectives of the AI. If you replace "AI" with "marketing" would you still make that statement?
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    If you replace "ai" with "your spouse" would that change be as intellectually useless?
- convolvatron 10y ago
  don't you think thats a pretty severe statement wrt to free will and agency? if i'm just a consumer wired up to a machine thats deciding whats best for me (even with the best of intentions), doesn't that make me less human? should I just be a actor playing through a set itinerary of vacations and movies and burgers and relationships? maybe you think its that way already, except less perfect than it might be, but thats a pretty frightening notion to me.
- pjlegato 10y ago
  The same argument was historically made to justify slavery.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    And to justify the continued existence of the electoral college.
ubercore 10y ago
To my mind, leading a simple life is enjoying a burger at a restaurant/bar I frequent already. Simplicity _is_ accepting that Google algorithmically noticed a trend and just helped me do things I already do.
- Koshkin 10y ago
  Yes, traps are usually designed so that it is simple to get into them. It is not that cheese is bad, it is that you are trapped.
  - blhack 10y ago
    Are you comparing something designed to kill a rat with something designed to help me go to a burger place I like, or leave on time for work?
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      Yes. How does Google make money of this service again?
      - Sargos 10y ago
        By having burger places pay money to get on the list of places it helpfully gives us when we want to eat a tasty burger. I still get my tasty burger.
    - mikestew 10y ago
      Yes, because when one has already decided that feature $FOO is a trap, any further discussion is likely to be limited to describing how "yes, just like a trap is designed to...so is the thing we're talking about" whether the analogy is apt or not. Something something supporting a narrative.
- verytrivial 10y ago
  Sorry, who's mind? It sound like you are renting it out.
cm2012 10y ago
Almost all decisions are unconscious decisions. whether or not Google is involved. We usually rationalize our reasoning after the decision is made.
WallowC_33 10y ago
Given all the other points in life where, despite my awareness, I don't have much choice, how is an AI just directing me really any different? My culture, education and skills limit what work I can do. Our culture places limits on a vast number of experiences. On the road and the only thing is fast food? Welp, eating fast food. Live somewhere that only has one grocery store or cable provider? I don't really see AI in the form Google is peddling as really all that much different. We're just 'more aware' that the world around us is really guiding us. I may be somewhere new, and can only see the immediate surroundings without a lot of exploring. And let's be real, in the US, most cities are the same when it comes to restaurants/hotels and such. There are differences in culture but we don't usually see them if we're just visiting. Not in a way that matters. Google will let me know that the things I prefer back home? there are equivalents nearby. Fencing ourselves in is what we do. Who knows, perhaps a digital assistant would help us stick to our personal goals and decisions better. Rather than just having to accept what's there.
JackFr 10y ago
> I fear you will be unable to recognize when that burger was your choice and when it was a reaction. Maybe the illusion is that it was a choice . . .
- tedunangst 10y ago
  Not far from the mark. People have quite different behaviors when asked "what do you want?" vs a constant stream of "do you want X?" questions.
Ph0X 10y ago
I'm sorry but that just sounds like blind fear mongering. What you're saying is vague and doesn't really mean much. It's like saying we shouldn't use prescription glasses, or medication, or cars, because it's not "us". Humans invent all these tools and systems to improve and optimize our life. Make our vision better. Make our health better. Make us move around faster. In the case of AI, make us do perform certain things more efficiently. Imagine it wasn't an actually computer. Imagine it was a personal secretary you had that gave you the EXACT same information. Gave you your flight information, turned on the light when you asked, gave you the weather and your schedule. Would you think that was wrong? That this isn't "you"? No, it's just optimizing your life, but now available for a wider population rather than rich people.
- mcguire 10y ago
  Imagine that you were trying to quit smoking and your electronic secretary kept updating you on the cheapest place to find your favorite cigarettes? With no way to tell it not to do that.
  - Ph0X 10y ago
    So your issue is your secretary doing it's job poorly? First, there is a way to tell it to not do that. With Google Now, you simply tap the menu and say "No more notification like this". With the assistant, you will probably be able to ask directly. Second, let's be honest, humans fail pretty often too, so that's just a weak argument. Lastly, I think it's unfair to dismiss a new technology just because it could maybe fail, without having even tried it.
    - ethanbond 10y ago
      How about if the system is working exceptionally well, you're a depressed person, and the next ad you see is auctioned off between a therapist, a pharma company, and a noose supply store in the 100ms it takes to render your MyFaceGram profile? The awful success cases are far more interesting than the awful failure cases.
tekromancr 10y ago
That's the thing though. I reject the notion that you ever actually make a choice. I would posit that 100% of the actions you take are simply the deterministic reactions when the current world state is filtered through your brain. Then, after the fact, your brain gets busy inventing a reason that you took a particular action and calls it a "choice" when really you were just going to do what you were going to do anyway. "I ordered this burger because I was hungry and it tastes good" vs "I ordered this burger because Google was able to successfully predict that I would be receptive to having burgers, or the idea of burgers, placed in my environment"
- bbctol 10y ago
  Sure, but philosophical musings on the nature of free will aside, there's a practical worry about the amount of power a private company has over your actions. I'd rather be ordering burgers because they taste good than because a company wanted me too--I expect this will lead to greater happiness for me in the long run.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    Yes, but only because your happiness metric maximizes when you exercise your freedom of choice. Other people's happiness metrics work differently, and all popular web services are popular precisely because they satisfy the unconscious desires of the majority of people.
- samastur 10y ago
  In effect you argument is that we don't have free will, right? I wonder what is then causing inefficiency when we read restaurant's menu and can't decide what we will have. I'm with those who think we make choices and decisions far less often than we think, but that we still do make them.
  - princeb 10y ago
    i am no longer intrigued by the privacy discussion but the actual possibility that we are just consciousnesses controlled by the google hivemind. this is like absolutely full on plugged into the matrix world. and we're living right in it. these guys are like the ones who've taken the red pill, and gone on to find out how far the rabbit hole is going. (edit: i'm even more intrigued by the possibility that the future is not just the matrix singularity, but an oligopoly of several large singularities, all fighting to plug us in)
jccalhoun 10y ago
> I feel we are widening the field of unconscious decisions and I see that as inherently bad I'm curious why you think this is bad. I don't necessarily think it is good but I also don't necessarily think it is actually happening
- Eupolemos 10y ago
  Which news-sources do you use? Which news-sources are you going to learn about? Which news-sources are you for some reason very unlikely to encounter? Now apply a real-time AI filter-bubble, able to also include government policies in its decision-making, onto those questions. I believe the most important thing in life is thinking. I believe a key element of thinking is looking at "easy stuff", the stuff we just live with every day and don't think about, and for some reason be forced to think about it and make it simple. Take the Snowden-leak. We lived a nice life being the good guys and that kind of surveillance was publicly thought of as conspiracy theories. Suddenly we were forced to look at what was going on. How much of it are we okay with? On the grounds of what principles and tradeoffs? This is all very unpleasant, but we're all better off for facing those questions and work towards new principles. We take a chaotic gruel of cons and pros, and try to hammer them into a few simple principles our societies may function by. For instance, the separation of power into 3 has served us well. I fear that we end up in a world where raising such unpleasant questions becomes almost impossible - and we'll never even notice. Not because of AI (I believe AI to be inevitable and fascinating) but because of the way AI is used. Living a life assisted by an AI, made and paid for by someone else, seems like the epitome of naivete to me.

empath75 10y ago

I think for quite a large number of people, allowing AIs to make decisions for them will probably be better for them.

tedunangst 10y ago
Imagine some day your doctor advises to cut back on burgers and alcohol. Is Google going to incorporate that advice in its bar recommendations?
- aqzman 10y ago
  Is it Google's responsibility to? I would say no. If algorithms detect that an individual is going to a bar every Monday and Thursday night, and then starts providing information about said bar on Monday and Thursday nights I don't see the problem. But I think it would be a problem if every Monday and Thursday night Google Now started providing information about AA meetings in the area, instead of bar information. It's up to the user to make the choice, Google Now just detects trends and then displays information based on those trends. I go to the gym every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday morning. And each of those mornings Google Now tells me how many minutes it will take me to get to the gym from my current location. Should Google Now start giving me directions to the nearest breakfast place instead? No, not unless that starts becoming my pattern.
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    If you're trying to change your lifestyle, it's more difficult when you have a bad friend constantly enabling the behavior you're trying to cease. Google may not have a responsibility to be a good friend, but personally I'd prefer not to have a bad friend always following me around, thus I'm a little less excited about this feature.
    - whonut 10y ago
      You can just tell it to stop. It's not hard.
      - kodablah 10y ago
        I think many would rather tell it when to start instead. What's hard about telling it to stop is when you can't tell it's started because it's something more nuanced than the obvious diet plan.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    It may not be their responsibility (although if it had that information it would be the morally correct choice). However, regardless of the responsibility -- the CEO of the company saying "we're going to make your life better!" by an AI pushing products is almost certainly not going to make your life better. > Should Google Now start giving me directions to the nearest breakfast place instead? That may depend on how much Waffle House pays for advertising, and that is the problem.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Why not? As long as you're clicking their ads, they'll make money regardless of whether you're buying a burger or a salad.
Super_Jambo 10y ago
When the AIs are working in service of corporations this seems incredibly unlikely. We already see what happens when peoples decision making is coloured by mass media advertising. An obese population trapped by debts taken out to fuel consumption. It is in other peoples best interests for you to work like a slave, be addicted to unhealthy habits & run up vast debts in order to buy their products. We keep allowing those with power to distort the markets gaining themselves more money and more power at the expense of the little guy. I don't see any reason why AI in the service of the powerful will do anything but accelerate that.
inimino 10y ago
That rather depends on the objectives of the AI. If you replace "AI" with "marketing" would you still make that statement?
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  If you replace "ai" with "your spouse" would that change be as intellectually useless?
convolvatron 10y ago
don't you think thats a pretty severe statement wrt to free will and agency? if i'm just a consumer wired up to a machine thats deciding whats best for me (even with the best of intentions), doesn't that make me less human? should I just be a actor playing through a set itinerary of vacations and movies and burgers and relationships? maybe you think its that way already, except less perfect than it might be, but thats a pretty frightening notion to me.
pjlegato 10y ago
The same argument was historically made to justify slavery.
- majewsky 10y ago
  And to justify the continued existence of the electoral college.

ubercore 10y ago

To my mind, leading a simple life is enjoying a burger at a restaurant/bar I frequent already. Simplicity _is_ accepting that Google algorithmically noticed a trend and just helped me do things I already do.

Koshkin 10y ago
Yes, traps are usually designed so that it is simple to get into them. It is not that cheese is bad, it is that you are trapped.
- blhack 10y ago
  Are you comparing something designed to kill a rat with something designed to help me go to a burger place I like, or leave on time for work?
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Yes. How does Google make money of this service again?
    - Sargos 10y ago
      By having burger places pay money to get on the list of places it helpfully gives us when we want to eat a tasty burger. I still get my tasty burger.
  - mikestew 10y ago
    Yes, because when one has already decided that feature $FOO is a trap, any further discussion is likely to be limited to describing how "yes, just like a trap is designed to...so is the thing we're talking about" whether the analogy is apt or not. Something something supporting a narrative.
verytrivial 10y ago
Sorry, who's mind? It sound like you are renting it out.

cm2012 10y ago

Almost all decisions are unconscious decisions. whether or not Google is involved. We usually rationalize our reasoning after the decision is made.

WallowC_33 10y ago

Given all the other points in life where, despite my awareness, I don't have much choice, how is an AI just directing me really any different? My culture, education and skills limit what work I can do. Our culture places limits on a vast number of experiences. On the road and the only thing is fast food? Welp, eating fast food. Live somewhere that only has one grocery store or cable provider? I don't really see AI in the form Google is peddling as really all that much different. We're just 'more aware' that the world around us is really guiding us. I may be somewhere new, and can only see the immediate surroundings without a lot of exploring. And let's be real, in the US, most cities are the same when it comes to restaurants/hotels and such. There are differences in culture but we don't usually see them if we're just visiting. Not in a way that matters. Google will let me know that the things I prefer back home? there are equivalents nearby. Fencing ourselves in is what we do. Who knows, perhaps a digital assistant would help us stick to our personal goals and decisions better. Rather than just having to accept what's there.

JackFr 10y ago

> I fear you will be unable to recognize when that burger was your choice and when it was a reaction. Maybe the illusion is that it was a choice . . .

tedunangst 10y ago
Not far from the mark. People have quite different behaviors when asked "what do you want?" vs a constant stream of "do you want X?" questions.

Ph0X 10y ago

I'm sorry but that just sounds like blind fear mongering. What you're saying is vague and doesn't really mean much. It's like saying we shouldn't use prescription glasses, or medication, or cars, because it's not "us". Humans invent all these tools and systems to improve and optimize our life. Make our vision better. Make our health better. Make us move around faster. In the case of AI, make us do perform certain things more efficiently. Imagine it wasn't an actually computer. Imagine it was a personal secretary you had that gave you the EXACT same information. Gave you your flight information, turned on the light when you asked, gave you the weather and your schedule. Would you think that was wrong? That this isn't "you"? No, it's just optimizing your life, but now available for a wider population rather than rich people.

mcguire 10y ago
Imagine that you were trying to quit smoking and your electronic secretary kept updating you on the cheapest place to find your favorite cigarettes? With no way to tell it not to do that.
- Ph0X 10y ago
  So your issue is your secretary doing it's job poorly? First, there is a way to tell it to not do that. With Google Now, you simply tap the menu and say "No more notification like this". With the assistant, you will probably be able to ask directly. Second, let's be honest, humans fail pretty often too, so that's just a weak argument. Lastly, I think it's unfair to dismiss a new technology just because it could maybe fail, without having even tried it.
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    How about if the system is working exceptionally well, you're a depressed person, and the next ad you see is auctioned off between a therapist, a pharma company, and a noose supply store in the 100ms it takes to render your MyFaceGram profile? The awful success cases are far more interesting than the awful failure cases.

tekromancr 10y ago

That's the thing though. I reject the notion that you ever actually make a choice. I would posit that 100% of the actions you take are simply the deterministic reactions when the current world state is filtered through your brain. Then, after the fact, your brain gets busy inventing a reason that you took a particular action and calls it a "choice" when really you were just going to do what you were going to do anyway. "I ordered this burger because I was hungry and it tastes good" vs "I ordered this burger because Google was able to successfully predict that I would be receptive to having burgers, or the idea of burgers, placed in my environment"

bbctol 10y ago
Sure, but philosophical musings on the nature of free will aside, there's a practical worry about the amount of power a private company has over your actions. I'd rather be ordering burgers because they taste good than because a company wanted me too--I expect this will lead to greater happiness for me in the long run.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Yes, but only because your happiness metric maximizes when you exercise your freedom of choice. Other people's happiness metrics work differently, and all popular web services are popular precisely because they satisfy the unconscious desires of the majority of people.
samastur 10y ago
In effect you argument is that we don't have free will, right? I wonder what is then causing inefficiency when we read restaurant's menu and can't decide what we will have. I'm with those who think we make choices and decisions far less often than we think, but that we still do make them.
- princeb 10y ago
  i am no longer intrigued by the privacy discussion but the actual possibility that we are just consciousnesses controlled by the google hivemind. this is like absolutely full on plugged into the matrix world. and we're living right in it. these guys are like the ones who've taken the red pill, and gone on to find out how far the rabbit hole is going. (edit: i'm even more intrigued by the possibility that the future is not just the matrix singularity, but an oligopoly of several large singularities, all fighting to plug us in)

jccalhoun 10y ago

> I feel we are widening the field of unconscious decisions and I see that as inherently bad I'm curious why you think this is bad. I don't necessarily think it is good but I also don't necessarily think it is actually happening

Eupolemos 10y ago
Which news-sources do you use? Which news-sources are you going to learn about? Which news-sources are you for some reason very unlikely to encounter? Now apply a real-time AI filter-bubble, able to also include government policies in its decision-making, onto those questions. I believe the most important thing in life is thinking. I believe a key element of thinking is looking at "easy stuff", the stuff we just live with every day and don't think about, and for some reason be forced to think about it and make it simple. Take the Snowden-leak. We lived a nice life being the good guys and that kind of surveillance was publicly thought of as conspiracy theories. Suddenly we were forced to look at what was going on. How much of it are we okay with? On the grounds of what principles and tradeoffs? This is all very unpleasant, but we're all better off for facing those questions and work towards new principles. We take a chaotic gruel of cons and pros, and try to hammer them into a few simple principles our societies may function by. For instance, the separation of power into 3 has served us well. I fear that we end up in a world where raising such unpleasant questions becomes almost impossible - and we'll never even notice. Not because of AI (I believe AI to be inevitable and fascinating) but because of the way AI is used. Living a life assisted by an AI, made and paid for by someone else, seems like the epitome of naivete to me.